


Jetsam

by AeAyem



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls: Infernal City/Lord of Souls
Genre: AU, F/F, cw: brief discussion of csa (divayth fyr is discussed), i know what you're thinking: someone read the infernal city/lord of souls books?, infernal city, lord of souls, umbriel, well this dumb bitch did
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 18:41:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18429866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AeAyem/pseuds/AeAyem
Summary: 'Unwanted goods, thrown overboard and washed ashore.'A broken woman from another world meets someone exactly like her.





	Jetsam

When Umbriel exploded, Slyr fell to not-Umbriel, a world so similar and different to her own. She fell into an Umbriel if Umbriel was ran through with lava, like a land with its bloody veins gouged open, fungus cut to shreds like she was. She fell into a city of towering mushroom-houses and stone buildings falling to rubble. She fell into the arms of a family fleeing by boat.

She was disoriented for a long time after that, though nobody caught on, thinking her another traumatised refugee. She was one but not in the way they assumed. Umbriel had made her very smart and very mean; she told them her name, that she was a cook, and nothing more, and when questioned would withdraw behind her own arms and glower until they moved on to the next pitiful creature huddling on the ship. They were kind to her– they planned to enslave and kill her, so to keep her healthy and fresh they gave her clothing, and food, and healing. They spoke to her gently or not at all.

And they left her alone, and laughed at the fact that she would spend all day and night on the deck, even as the world grew colder and the wind biting. The first day she tried to stare at the great burning light above them, in those brief moments that the ash-thick sky parted and let its light through, until someone chastised her against it. Then she spent the day ogling the world instead. At first it was dizzying, not the motion but the sheer size of it– she’d never had her sight fail to meet a distant wall, except when looking up. She clutched the prow and stared from dawn until dusk. The ocean, especially, was marvellous to her, reminding her of the sump she’d crawled from so very long ago, cold and filled with hidden life. She only left the edge of the ship when she wasn’t sure she could keep herself from jumping in.

The stars she couldn’t see, as they were cloaked by endless ash.

In Umbriel she’d had a place, a purpose, right up until she didn’t, and everything had gone wrong. On the ship Slyr was mere cargo to be carried. During the nights, as she tried to avoid the concealed stars, she broke into the kitchens and fed herself and tried to cook with what base, revolting, simple ingredients she found. The second night a chef caught her, but he was swiftly impressed with her ability to transform a pile of wickwheat crackers into a souffle (‘as if by magic!’) and they decided to employ her. Slyr accepted, because it gave her something to do, and it gave her access to knives and wine, and the vastness of the sea was starting to make her heartsick. She cooped herself up in the kitchen night and day, rendering lackluster ingredients into mediocre meals. Outside of Umbriel people eat as poorly as skraws, so even her paltry concoctions dazzled and awed them. She accepted the praise cautiously.

On the fourth day, as the sun slid over the horizon, someone called out on deck, and everyone in the galley abandoned the miserable little cakes that Slyr had served, and rushed out into the air. Slyr followed them warily out, blinking in the thick silver haze that blanketed the ship. The sun had risen, technically, but the ash scattered its rays and hid its shape, and the air was filled with diffused light and ocean-mist, opaque and cream-coloured, it was as if the flat and shining sea had risen up around them. But before them an island shattered the horizon. A true island, a stationary mass of rocks and hills– all the things Slyr had only ever heard about in dreams of stories, far away.

There were only a few colours in the world outside: grey, tan, black, a city cast in sepia. Raven Rock, too, was colourless, but so had been Umbriel, and Slyr didn’t mind. Only the ocean broke the mold and it seemed to invent a new colour each day. When they all disembarked from the ship, and people who looked like her and not like her at all came forwards to greet them, Slyr slipped quietly away. Whatever foul purpose these people had saved her for she didn’t care to find out.

And what then? Where to go? She had been created for one purpose, and done badly at it, she had tried ambition and failed. Beneath her cloak she clawed at the deep scars on her arms, her punishment for mere survival. And yet for a blessed moment she forgot that she was meant to be or do anything at all. On land, everything was new to her, and for a long time she wandered around and marvelled at it all: she marvelled at the ocean, she marvelled at the ground beneath her feet, she marvelled at the drifts of ash, and the hills, and the dying trees, and the buildings that were like Umbriel’s in that they were circular and shell-shaped, but not like Umbriel’s in that they stood alone and simply, forming no labyrinths. She marvelled at the people, most of whom looked like her (dark skin, red eyes) but at the same time not like her at all. They were like Annaïg, though the thought churned her stomach; there was something natural and real about them, an organic roundness to their shapes, like trees, not crafted but grown. They were beautiful and she couldn’t help but stare.

For the most part they didn’t notice her, or glanced at her only briefly and with pity. She heard the word ‘Telvanni’ a few times. But she ignored them right back and went about her business, as if she knew what that was.

She followed her nose to a building where people gathered to eat, and found her way to the kitchen, and introduced herself as Slyr, a cook. It turned out that the head chef had heard her name from someone on the ship and he immediately put her to work making glorious things out of mushrooms and yams. By the time the ash-dark sky was growing even darker, and the rooms beyond were swollen with loud voices, Slyr had conjured an array of things for the guests: a rich and earthy soup, platters of sweet breadrolls stuffed with a hot curry sauce, grilled mushrooms served like steaks. The head chef, fat and haggard and nothing like the head chefs of Umbriel, was delighted with her work, though her ingredients had been strange and the results simple, even by her standards. Despite it all, she was still a good cook.

She was just starting on a dessert– an unusual but acceptable mushroom and cinnamon pudding– when something strange happened.

It happened to her ears. There was a sound in them: it was a voice but it wasn’t talking, it was words but not in speech. It drifted through the kitchen doorway, fluttering over the heads of the patrons outside, high and full and rich; it pierced her. If water were a sound, or if ice could be spoken, that voice would be it. It swelled to fill her until she ached, and her scars stretched like seams about to burst, and her heart quaked in fear that it would be drowned. Soon another sound joined the voice, a short harmonious plucking indescribable to Slyr, and it all became too much. She dropped her pudding and slipped silently out the door.

In the room, beyond the crowd, standing on a little table, was  _her._ She was a woman like Slyr and then exactly like Slyr. Yes, while Slyr’s face was gaunt, hers was round and smiling, and where Slyr’s hair was long and jet-black, hers was braided and white as eggshell, though she was not old; but there was something missing in her too, she bore the strange alien-ness of a being fabricated, not born. She held a strange instrument, and the voice rose and fell with the movements of her mouth. It was then that Slyr realized what she was hearing for the first time– music– only the Lords were ever fortunate enough to hear music. Stunned by her good luck, she stood in the midst of the crowd and stared.

When the musician’s eyes fell on her, the voice faltered slightly, only for a second but Slyr knew she had recognized her too. So Slyr sat at a vacant table, and buried her face in both hands, and rested her elbows on the grimy wood, and let her mind turn blank and full with that music, more potent than wine and sweeter than honey. She revisited an old fantasy of sitting on the roof of Umbriel, the highest of Lords and most celebrated of Chefs, successful and safe. But soon that fantasy dissolved into memories of sensations: a warm blanket around her and her head on a soft lap and her throat full of wine and the stars above. And then she thought of nothing at all.

When the music finally ended, after a minute or an hour, Slyr kept her hands pressed against her eyes, clutching the sound in her memory. The world around her seemed to take no notice of the song and no notice of her, until someone spoke to her, and said: “I’m going to sit here. Can I?”

Slyr didn’t respond or look up. The voice that spoke twisted her heart like a rag.

She heard the scrape of a chair, the creak of wood. “Will you look at me?”

Slyr peeked through her fingers. The musician sat across from her, a frown on her beautiful and familiar face.

“Oh,” said the musician. “Sorry. I should rephrase. Will you let me see your face?”

Slowly, cautiously, Slyr lowered her hands to the table.

“Ah,” said the musician. She leaned in, and a number of emotions flickered briefly across her expression, and her brows creased. Then she sat back and looked away, as if embarrassed. “I’m sorry. You look like my sister, sort of.”

Slyr didn’t know what a sister was, so she didn’t say anything.

“I’m Beyte Fyr,” said the musician after a moment.

“Slyr. What you were doing– that was music, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was. Have you never heard music before?”

“No. They don’t do that where I’m from.”

“How awful.” A pause. “Well. I hope you liked it.”

“I loved it,” said Slyr, “It was beautiful, just beautiful. I’ve never heard anything like it.”

Beyte looked back to her, with genuine interest in her eyes. “You aren’t from around here,” she said, “I can tell. That’s why I mistook you for my sister. Have you eaten yet? I’ll get dinner for us.”

“Don’t bother. I’ve already eaten, I was the one who cooked it. Is there wine?”

“There’s sujamma. Did you really cook it? It smells delicious. Wait here.”

So Beyte ran off, and returned presently with arms full of stuffed bread rolls and sujamma, and a blanket, and she lead Slyr outside, up a spiral staircase, onto the roof of the building, which was sheltered from the ash-fall by a strange giant mushroom. Here they could talk in private, said Beyte, as she spread out the blanket. The moons couldn’t pierce the veil above them but Beyte conjured a magical light that illuminated the scene.

And there they sat, and ate, and talked. It was Beyte who did most of the talking, speaking in the fast and constructed way of someone who’d been waiting to speak for years, and Slyr curled up and drank straight from the bottle and listened to the musician’s sad story. She started from the beginning: she was, as Slyr had known, a thing created, a clone of a man she called both ‘father’ and ‘husband’ with stilted irregularity. She spoke of growing up in a tower made of mushrooms, of learning to cook and clean and sing, of how she pleased everyone, and endured the ‘affections’ of her father-husband without ever complaining. She spoke fondly and at length of her sisters, with a voice full of love and hurt, recalling their flaws and their quirks and the silly arguments they had. Slyr tried to imagine them as she listened: four women, like her, surviving and enduring, exactly like her. She only half-listened to Beyte’s stories about cooking, stories about trying with anxiety and fear to tease ash-yams into the shape most pleasing to her master, and the claustrophobia of walls she could not leave; Beyte need not have told them at all, because they were Slyr’s stories, too. She knew them by heart without ever hearing them.

When Beyte talked about a secret place in the tower, where she could curl up alone and see the stars, Slyr butted in: “I had one of those too. A secret place I’d go at night, just to get away from everyone.”

“Everyone?”

“The other kitchen staff. I hated all of them, except–” she laughed a little, “Except Annaïg. That scamp-licking sumprat! I took her there, a few times.”

“Who’s Annaïg?” Beyte’s eyes on her seemed to burn in the magelight.

“She’s… she’s Annaïg.” Slyr’s voice faltered, but she was quite drunk by then, and she passed the bottle to Beyte. “Annaïg is… I come from Umbriel.”

“The floating city? But how did you end up here?”

“I fell.”

“Oh. Did it hurt?”

“Not really. Not worse than what Phmer was doing to me. Annaïg framed me for a theft. On Umbriel, head chefs don’t forgive thieves, and the punishments…”

And then it was her turn to speak, and out tumbled her story: disjointed and broken up, told in chunks, and she spent more time explaining what Umbriel was like than her role in it, but out came her story nonetheless. Beyte listened, gasping softly or reaching out to touch Slyr’s shoulder on occasion. These little gestures were unsettling– as Slyr spoke, she realized how very dreadful Umbriel must seem, the way she told it, and how dreadful she herself must seem, a murderer and a failed chef. And then she realized that it  _was_ all dreadful. And she found that she couldn’t speak of it any longer.

They sat in silence, then, Beyte’s hand warm on Slyr’s shoulder. The wind slowly changed direction, swinging around to blow from the east, and the ash was cleared for a moment, and the world grew lighter.

“Look,” said Beyte, “The stars are out.”

Slyr craned her head back. The sky was dark above them, but glittering with a thousand tiny pin-points of light, still in the same formations as she’d seen from her hideaway in Qijne’s kitchen all those years ago. “Holes leading to Aetherius,” she murmured.

“Yes. Look, you can see the warrior.”

“The warrior?”

“It’s a constellation. Ah… You don’t know what that is, do you? A constellation is a shape that the stars make. Divayth Fyr taught them all to me, a long time ago.”

“You must miss him.”

Beside her Beyte shuddered. “No. I miss my sisters, but not him. I miss my home, and Vistha-Kai, and even the tower and the ocean, but I do not miss him.”

“But there’s an ocean here.”

“It’s not the same. Not like the ocean at home. At home you could swim in the ocean and it would be warm as bathwater.”

“Have you tried swimming here?”

“No, of course not. The water must be frigid.”

Slyr stood up, swaying slightly from the effects of the sujamma, and put out her hand. “Well, let’s go, then.”

“Where?”

“To the ocean, to swim, of course. I’ve wanted to throw myself into it since I first saw it. I haven’t been swimming since… since I was created, at least.

Beyte stared at her, but offered no refusal; she stood, and clasped Slyr’s hand in her own, and the magelight made her eyes look like blood, and as intense as such, and she nodded.

They went to the beach together in silence, hand in hand, and stopped at a sandy flat where the waves lapped slow and lazy up on shore. The wind had swung and the ash had covered up the moons again, and the ocean before them was perfect black, darker than a cave, darker than a yawning mouth waiting to swallow them up. On the very horizon Red Mountain’s tip glowed like a beacon, and stars were scattered in handfuls where the sky dipped low to the earth.

Beyte hung back, cautious, but Slyr stepped willingly forwards into that void, stopping where waves with crests frothy and grey in the dim light lapped over her bare feet. The water was cold but not so cold as she’d thought; still, she shivered. Beyte’s eyes burned into her back like coals, like brands, as she peeled away her clothing and tossed it back onto the sand, leaving her dark skin cloaked only in its scars. With her head tilted back she stepped forwards, and sunk, abidingly, willingly, into the black sea, gasping at the cold.

“Slyr–” Beyte called, and before Slyr could reply she heard the rustle of clothing behind her, and then the awkward splash of someone surging through an oncoming tide. The chill caused Beyte to cry out and a moment later she fell onto Slyr’s back, clutching her and yelling as the frigid water lapped above her waist. Slyr stumbled at the sudden weight, and the two of them fell down into the water. Beyte screamed, and Slyr shouted, and they struggled for a moment to come above the tall tide. When they surfaced Slyr was laughing, absurdly, and Beyte’s light hair seemed to glow despite the moonless night.

“It’s cold!”

“Yes, but it’s not that bad!”

“It’s  _freezing!_ ”

“It’s fine!”

Beyte surged forwards and caught Slyr in an embrace again, pressing her face to the girl’s shoulder, her naked body shivering against Slyr’s own. “It’s freezing! Aren’t you cold?”

“Yes, but it’s not that bad. It could be worse.” Slyr embraced her in turn, and laughed against her shoulder. “It’s so salty, though. I wasn’t expecting that.”

“The ocean is salty. Isn’t the ocean salty on Umbriel?”

“There is no ocean on Umbriel!”

“How awful! I can’t imagine being without the ocean. Even on Tel Fyr, nothing felt wrong when I was in the sea.” Even Beyte’s voice was shaking with the cold, but she pulled away and tugged both of Slyr’s arms. “Come! Let’s go out further.”

So they waded out, clutching each others arms, until the sea covered their chests and each wave threatened to top their heads. A chill wind had picked up again, and the ash above them grew thin, and the light of the moons, light Slyr had never before seen, crept through the clouds and cast Beyte in an ethereal glow. She could hear nothing but the rhythmic crashing of waves; Beyte turned away from her, and outstretched her arms, and an expression of sincere joy spread across her moonlit face.

“I love the sea,” she called. “It never changes. I used to dream about floating away on the waves. What boundaries does the sea have? None. I could float away and be free of everything, if I wanted. I wouldn’t have to be a person. I wouldn’t have to please anyone. I could just… float.”

A tall wave swamped over them, and Slyr’s mouth was filled with salty water, and she sputtered. But as she watched Beyte tilted back and lay on top of the water easily as a bed, floating so effortlessly. Her breasts and her hips glowed in the new moonlight, her braided hair fluttered around her like a halo, her face wore a perfect smile. She made it look so simple– resting on top of those churning waves in the freezing air– that Slyr couldn’t help but try to copy her. Feet planted in the icy sand, she leaned back and let her head sink into the water.

She realized why it was the coldness of the water didn’t hurt her, then: she’d gotten used to it when they entered Toel’s kitchen, when she and Annaïg had stood in a pool and been scalded, and frozen, and scalded, and frozen. Was this similar? When she’d stood in that chilly water, embracing Annaïg, bare and shivering, laughing against her, confessing to her, expressing an emotion that didn’t exist on Umbriel with words she hadn’t understood herself, it had seemed that they were on the boundary of something wonderful: a new kitchen, a new bedroom, a new job, a new life, a new opportunity, a new promise. This, too, seemed a boundary and a promise of something new. Was this similar?

Beyte’s outstretched hand brushed her own, and then seized it, and then Slyr was pulled into an embrace, with broad shivering arms wrapping around her torso. “Let’s go back,” Beyte called in her ear, “It’s too cold. We’ll get sick. Let’s go back.”

Slyr knew, then, that it wasn’t similar at all; she wrapped her arms around Beyte all the same, and buried her face in a wet shoulder. Like Annaïg, Beyte was soft and well-fed, but her face was still that of a constructed thing, so alike those of Umbriel, and so, so different. This entire world was different.

“I don’t want to go back,” Slyr said, softly. “I don’t want to go back.”


End file.
